I have been going through my scheduled recordings every so often to see if generically filled in shows get episode specific information before their recording date and I just saw the "opposite" happen. I have opened a ticket on SD but I thought I would post it here.

When I added the new season of Schitt's Creek on POP about a week ago it correctly listed the Sneak Peak on Tuesday and the first episode on Wednesday as being scheduled to record. As I was going through my recordings last night I noticed that now only the Sneak peak is the only thing scheduled. I looked at the wednesday (3/16) night 6pm MST time slot and all of the info is there but it now has an OAD of 1/12/16. The 3/23 episode has an OAD of 1/19/16 and the 3/30 episode has an OAD of 1/26/16.

The reason I mention it here is that if I go to Zap2it and look the episode does not have the OAD info specifically but it is marked as "new/premiere" as opposed to "repeat/premiere" in WMC. I think it is a TMS issue but I am not sure. I opened a SD ticket to see if they can see anything there.

This is normal for shows that originally aired in another country. You can use "New & Rerun" in your Series settings and it should work fine.

As far as I can tell, WMC does not use the NEW flag, and depends on the OAD to determine if an episode is a repeat or not.

It appears that the NEW flag gets set for first time airings in the USA, but the OAD remains the original date it was aired in it's original country.

One thing that could be considered is to have a (user selectable) option in EPG123 to set the OAD of an episode to the initial USA airing date (the date of that specific airing) if the NEW flag is set on that airing. Essentially, this would treat the NEW flag as being the best indicator that a episode is new instead of the OAD.

^ everything Space said is true as far as what is documented concerning how WMC determines new/repeat. There are, however, a lot of flags that are undocumented that are available. Now that I have something real to look at, I can see if any of those undocumented flags can work to use the "New" qualifier in the RAW and help out with this.

ewtaylo: I may have to hit you up for what lineup you are using. I'm not familiar with POP so don't know if it a part of any of my current lineups.

What I think is interesting is that when the series was first added WMC had the 3/16 episode marked to record. To me that means the OAD was 3/16. Now that I see that TMS actually has the OAD as the same date I see in WMC I know that this is not an epg123 issue. I will switch my series over to new and rerun to cover this situation. But I will gladly test anything that I can for you.

ewtaylo wrote:I am using comcast digital cable in the 87107 area code.

What I think is interesting is that when the series was first added WMC had the 3/16 episode marked to record. To me that means the OAD was 3/16. Now that I see that TMS actually has the OAD as the same date I see in WMC I know that this is not an epg123 issue. I will switch my series over to new and rerun to cover this situation. But I will gladly test anything that I can for you.

edit: channel 811

When you first create a new Series by selecting an existing episode of a series and selecting "Create series", it tends to schedule the currently selected episode to record, even if it does not match the recording criteria. Subsequent episodes will only be recorded if they match the criteria specified.

Also, I recommend using "New & Rerun" for all of your Series. The only time I don't use it is when I am recording a series that has a lot of old episodes that I don't want to record that air on the same channel (I almost always use channel-specific Series). Note that a Series will never record the same episode twice, regardless of this setting.

garyan2 wrote:^ everything Space said is true as far as what is documented concerning how WMC determines new/repeat. There are, however, a lot of flags that are undocumented that are available. Now that I have something real to look at, I can see if any of those undocumented flags can work to use the "New" qualifier in the RAW and help out with this.

I had zero success on this one. The flags I was looking at are controlled by WMC based on the OAD to decide New/Repeat. For now, looks like we just have to be aware of this.

garyan2 wrote:^ everything Space said is true as far as what is documented concerning how WMC determines new/repeat. There are, however, a lot of flags that are undocumented that are available. Now that I have something real to look at, I can see if any of those undocumented flags can work to use the "New" qualifier in the RAW and help out with this.

I had zero success on this one. The flags I was looking at are controlled by WMC based on the OAD to decide New/Repeat. For now, looks like we just have to be aware of this.

Any thoughts on an option to force the OAD to be the airing date for any airings that are marked as NEW in the SD feed?I don't think this is a critical issue, because you can just set the Series to "New & Rerun" to overcome it, but it might be something to consider.

garyan2 wrote:^ everything Space said is true as far as what is documented concerning how WMC determines new/repeat. There are, however, a lot of flags that are undocumented that are available. Now that I have something real to look at, I can see if any of those undocumented flags can work to use the "New" qualifier in the RAW and help out with this.

I had zero success on this one. The flags I was looking at are controlled by WMC based on the OAD to decide New/Repeat. For now, looks like we just have to be aware of this.

Any thoughts on an option to force the OAD to be the airing date for any airings that are marked as NEW in the SD feed?I don't think this is a critical issue, because you can just set the Series to "New & Rerun" to overcome it, but it might be something to consider.

I haven't forgotten about this question. I was actually composing a response a couple days ago describing why it would not be possible ... but ended up framing a solution. I just don't know if there will be any unintended consequences of doing what you suggest. The purist in me objects to altering the facts (OAD).

I'll keep pondering this one. Don't really see any harm ... certainly if the user defines their series recording to be channel specific.

garyan2 wrote:...I haven't forgotten about this question. I was actually composing a response a couple days ago describing why it would not be possible ... but ended up framing a solution. I just don't know if there will be any unintended consequences of doing what you suggest. The purist in me objects to altering the facts (OAD).

I'll keep pondering this one. Don't really see any harm ... certainly if the user defines their series recording to be channel specific.

I completely understand why you would be uncomfortable with this. Of course the problem is that Microsoft seems to have painted itself in to a corner by using the OAD to determine if an episode is new or a repeat. This was probably not a great idea from the start (at least not without the ability to override it).

One issue with using "New & Rerun" is if you want to start recording a new season of a foreign series, but you have never recorded that series before. For instance let's take "Dr. Who" as an example (probably not a great example, but let's assume new episodes air on the same channel as episodes from all previous seasons). If you set it to "New & Rerun" and a specific channel, you would end up recording not only the new episodes from the current season, but every episode from all past seasons. This could get tedious having to manually delete all those unwanted episodes from the upcoming recordings list. Other than setting a one-off record for the one new episode every week or perhaps setting a time-specific record (which fails if the show changes time slots), there is no other alternative.

I would say if it is not too much trouble, make it an option. If people like it, they can turn it on, otherwise just leave it at the default and you get the actual OAD for foreign series. Unless, of course, you can find a way to make an episode NEW without changing the OAD (which I think you already tried).

So I took Space's advice and set a New&Rerun for that series. Luckily this is only season #2, so I will just have to deal with the season 1 episodes showing up. I had no idea this was a Canadian series. All i knew is that the new season was starting. The big issue I have is that I know have to know if a series is a foreign series when I am setting up the season pass. Is it true, Space, that you set all your season passes as new&rerun, channel specific? Perhaps that is what I need to do with mine.

I understand the reluctance to change the OAD. I understand your purist view. My purist view is that I only want new episodes of a show and in order to do that I have to set new&rerun. But there is a workaround as Space has described so I am neutral on having to pursue this issue.

ewtaylo wrote:...Is it true, Space, that you set all your season passes as new&rerun, channel specific? Perhaps that is what I need to do with mine.

For the most part, yes. The only time I don't is if there are a lot of repeats of previous seasons (meaning seasons that were on before I created the Season-pass recording on WMC) aired on the same channel that I don't want to record.

For the most part this works fine, because WMC will not record the same episode twice (as long as the guide data is correct). So that means if a new episode is airing and repeating 10 times that week, it will only record it once, even if you have it set to "New & Rerun".